Leader of City College of New York Will Shed Interim Status

More than a year after its president abruptly resigned amid a federal investigation into her finances, the City College of New York, the flagship campus of the City University of New York, is turning to a familiar hand as its next leader.

Vincent G. Boudreau, the school’s interim president, is expected to be given the job on a permanent basis on Monday by CUNY’s board of trustees, according to college officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid upstaging the announcement.

Dr. Boudreau, who turns 55 next week, has spent his entire 26-year academic career at City College, and previously served as dean of the Colin L. Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership. A political scientist with a Ph.D. from Cornell, Dr. Boudreau has specialized in studying social movements, especially in Southeast Asia.

The selection culminates what some alumni, faculty and staff members felt had been a protracted, even frustrating, search process after the downfall last October of Lisa S. Coico, whose finances, among other areas, are being investigated by the United States attorney for the Eastern District.

The university’s search had originally seemed to focus on hiring an outsider — especially one with fund-raising prowess. But over the course of his stewardship, Dr. Boudreau won many people over, including donors, for restoring order and creating the impression that he was transparent, accountable and approachable.

When asked about Dr. Boudreau, James B. Milliken, CUNY’s chancellor, said, “I’m not in a position at this time to comment on the search process.” But he said that as interim president Dr. Boudreau “has demonstrated leadership under some tough circumstances, stabilized City College, been working closely with us in addressing the budget deficit, and he’s led with integrity and transparency.”

With 16,000 students, most of them undergraduates, City College has been called “the poor man’s Harvard” for educating thousands of poor, minority and immigrant students. This week, the college ranked second on a list of four-year public colleges with the most success helping low-income students move to the middle class, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dr. Coico arrived with much fanfare in 2010 as the first CUNY alumna to serve as president of City College, which was established in 1847. With a background in microbiology and immunobiology, she was expected to lead an ambitious expansion of the college’s science offerings, and to continue its recent fund-raising success.

But she was a polarizing figure, and presided over a campus that endured punishing budget cuts. In 2015, for instance, the college imposed a 10 percent budget reduction, citing increasing personnel costs, even though cuts at other CUNY schools were closer to 3 percent.

Last summer, around the time The New York Times raised questions about whether more than $150,000 of her personal expenses had been paid improperly by a university research foundation, federal prosecutors began an investigation of Ms. Coico. In October, she resigned, one day after The Times presented new evidence to the college suggesting that a memo related to those expenses had been fabricated, possibly to mislead prosecutors.

William C. Thompson Jr., the chairman of CUNY’s Board of Trustees and a former New York City comptroller, subsequently asked for a thorough investigation of all “foundations, alumni associations or other affiliated entities” at City College.

Not long afterward, Catherine Leahy Scott, the New York State inspector general, criticized CUNY’s financial practices as “ripe for abuse” in an unusual interim report, prompting Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to demand sweeping changes.

In June, CUNY’s board approved a plan to centralize oversight of the foundations. But the ongoing vacancy at City College had generated enough concern that Mr. Milliken, in an unusual letter, cautioned that the search for a new president would take longer than anticipated.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Interim City College Leader Is Said to Get Permanent Job. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe